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Friday, November 14, 2014

Samsung and BlackBerry team up for better Android security

Samsung is tapping an unlikely source to tighten up its security offerings for enterprises:BlackBerry.

The two companies announced a new security-focused partnership Thursday that will bring BlackBerry's encryption system to businesses using Samsung's Galaxy smartphones.

Beginning early next year, Samsung will integrate BlackBerry's BES12 end-to-end encryption service, into its own Knox software. Knox, which Samsung licenses to enterprise customers, adds an extra layer of security to Android devices— though the service has been criticized for weak encryption.

“BlackBerry has developed a very close partnership with Samsung and we’re committed to deepening the interaction between our engineering and product development teams for the long-term,” John Sims, BlackBerry's President of Global Enterprise Services, said in a statement.

“It is a natural progression in our path to providing our customers with more alternatives to meet their evolving mobile needs. Samsung KNOX offers a number of hardware and software security features and our partnership allows us to tightly integrate these capabilities with BES12.”

The seemingly unlikely partnership stands to benefit both companies. Samsung will be able to provide enterprise users with better security, while the ever-struggling BlackBerry will expand its software reach to new customers who don't use BlackBerry devices.

Samsung will begin to offer the software in early 2015, but the company has not revealed details about pricing.